(Part 2) Top products from r/KerbalSpaceProgram

Jump to the top 20

We found 21 product mentions on r/KerbalSpaceProgram. We ranked the 144 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.

Next page

Top comments that mention products on r/KerbalSpaceProgram:

u/ravensfreak0624 · 1 pointr/KerbalSpaceProgram

I assume you mean just learning about rockets, not literally building your own. Building your own is a hundreds of thousands of dollars endeavor (at the cheapest) and requires regulatory approval from your nation's government - it's no easy task.

I've found that /r/SpaceX is a good place to learn the ins and outs of orbital rockets, though as you might expect it's pretty heavily SpaceX focused, so you'll learn a lot more about Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy than other launch vehicles. The sub's wiki and FAQ sections give a very good overview of SpaceX and rocketry in general, and you should consider giving those a read.

Beyond that, the best thing you can do is seek out opportunities to learn. Do you have a favorite science, engineering, or mathematics professor at school? Talk to them about your interest in spaceflight and what opportunities there are to learn more. There are some great books out there about spaceflight as well, from historical narratives like "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe, which talks about the history of spaceflight. John Anderson's Introduction to Flight was a textbook I used in one of my introductory aerospace classes, it's a bit pricey (though you can save money on an old edition) and obviously reads like a textbook, but give a good technical overview on both air and space systems.

After you've done all that, if you really want to get into the details of orbital mechanics and spacecraft design, you're going to need a college education. Are you in the United States or interested in studying here? I'd be happy to recommend some schools to keep an eye on if you're considering making a career out of this.

Edit: formatting

u/EagleEyeInTheSky · 2 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

If you want to get super serious about this game and really know what you're doing, then I'd suggest getting this book and reading up on actual rocket science. Taking a class on astronautics in college was when I personally really started to understand the concepts required by KSP. However, in the interest of saving forty bucks, there's a lot out there on the internet that can teach you this stuff just as easily. Scott Manley's videos are pretty good. I'm also sure that there's some written tutorials out there.

By far the most important concept is that of deltav, which is actually formally written as Δv. Mathematically, this literally translates to change in velocity. When Kerbal Engineering Redux tells you how much Δv one of your stages contains, it's telling you that if there were no gravity, and your ship was floating in a pure vacuum motionless, and you pointed in one direction, and fired your rockets and emptied that entire stage's worth of fuel, that Δv number is how fast your rocket would be going at the end of the burn. Δv is a measure of how much "effort" your stage can put out and how much of a change in velocity it can impart on your rocket as a whole.

Δv is one of the most important concepts in navigating space, because in order to change from one orbit to another, there is a very specific, easily calculable change in velocity that must take place. You probably know that in order to orbit at a certain height above Kerbin, there is a very specific speed that your ship must have in order to maintain a perfectly circular orbit(this is assuming your orbit is perfectly spherical and not elliptical like most orbits are). Similarly, there is a very specific velocity that your ship must have when it leaves that orbit to head to the Mun in order to get that smooth elliptical transfer to the Mun. Therefore the difference in velocity between the circular orbit and the transfer orbit is the Δv that must be imparted onto the vehicle in order to transfer to the Mun. This is approximated for you on those Δv maps like this one.

So, by using Δv maps and maneuver nodes, you can figure out how much Δv you need to make your maneuvers, but now you need to figure out how much fuel you need to perform those maneuvers. That all depends on how much fuel is burned, how efficiently it is burned, how much structural weight is present in the rocket, and the weight ratio between fuel and structure. Another point to consider is that rocket acceleration is not constant, for as the rocket burns fuel, it will constantly get lighter and experience stronger and stronger acceleration, assuming that it is experiencing constant throttling. This has all been simplified by the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. For all non-air breathing engines, Δv = (g0)(Isp)ln(Mi/Mf), where g0 is the gravitational acceleration at the surface of Kerbin(this is constant everywhere in the game, it's simply a unit conversion constant), Isp is the efficiency of the fuel and the engine burning it, Mi is the initial total mass of the vehicle before the burn, and Mf is the mass of the vehicle after the burn. You can calculate this yourself but since Kerbal Engineering Redux does this for you, why bother? However, it is important to understand the main criteria for adjusting Δv in your designs. g0 and Isp are mainly fixed values. The main variable to adjust in your designs is the mass ratio Mi/Mf. The less dead weight on your vehicle(this includes upper stages that haven't burned yet), and the more fuel burned, the more Δv you'll achieve in your designs. This is also why staging is so important. By staging and dropping your dead weight, you're decreasing structural mass hindering your upper stages and gaining more Δv. If you want to get more serious about your designs, you can add up the masses of the parts you want on your ship in a spreadsheet and calculate optimal staging sizes for your ship using the limited parts in the KSP inventory.

Other considerations are TWR, or Thrust to Weight ratio, which is simply the thrust of that stage matched to the weight of the whole ship. Changing the reference body in Kerbal Engineering simply adjusts the weight for each body. A lander on Minmus doesn't have to be super powerful, and might have a really small TWR on Kerbin, but that doesn't matter because all it needs to take off from Minmus is a TWR greater than 1 on Minmus, whose gravity is way weaker than Kerbin's.

I'll also throw out another tip that I hardly ever see mentioned here. Before you launch, check your center of mass and center of lift. In a rocket, your center of lift should always be below the center of mass. If it isn't, then you need to add stabilizing fins at the bottom of your rocket. A rocket with the center of lift above the center of mass is very likely to flip over backwards during its launch. Also, if you're attaching control surfaces, they're more effective the farther away they are from the center of mass, so it's always important to know where your center of mass is.

u/FallingStar7669 · 2 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

Science mode limits the available parts until you do the science to unlock more, without having to deal with restrictions like funding. You're almost literally forced to start simple, which is very useful given the steep curve of this game.

I'm no education expert, but I've been playing games since the NES came out. And what I've seen of this coming generation, they're pretty sharp, even if their reading skills are limited. Don't expect a 4 year old to understand delta-v, but fully expect them, after a few weeks of play, to not need to worry about it. If they can survive the steep learning curve, they'll know what engine they want by the picture (most of us do anyway) and they'll know what it does because they tried it and saw for themselves. It might be useful at the very least to explain "this one makes you go fast but uses up all your fuel, this one makes you go slow but uses less fuel" and stuff like that. Basically, talk to them as if you're quoting this book.

A child's mind is a very wondrous machine. If nothing else, trust that, if their interest is strong enough to overcome their failures, they will blow you away sooner than you could ever realize.

u/RoboRay · 1 pointr/KerbalSpaceProgram

Let me plug those books (Larry Niven's The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring) as excellent reading for anyone interested in "hard" (or, more realistic) science fiction. Be sure to read The Integral Trees first, as The Smoke Ring is a sequel.

Already having a rudimentary understanding of orbital mechanics from KSP will make them a lot easier to follow. :)

u/FinKM · 4 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

Fun fact, that was drawn entirely freehand. No rulers used.

This particular diagram is from Stephen Biesty's Absolutely Best Cross Section Book Ever. I highly recommend it for anyone who has children, it is genuinely one of the best books I ever had as a kid, and really got me interested in engineering.

I think some of his other books may also have this diagram, but this particular book is the most wide-ranging and includes content from multiple others (Some more of his work, for reference).

u/kurtu5 · 1 pointr/KerbalSpaceProgram

You will have to take my word for it. My library is a mess and I can't find my copy of "Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship"

Freeman Dyson explained how this result was exciting and started the line of research that started the design of this system. He indicated it created a stagnation layer that prevented the plasma from directly touching the metal. The only issue was radiative heat transfer and that was solved by making the plate a large heatsink and lowering the duty cycle of the impinging plasma.

u/OoglieBooglie93 · 1 pointr/KerbalSpaceProgram

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199837708/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Orbital Mechanics, by Prussing and Conway.

From what I hear, it's the best. I have it myself, although I haven't used it too much (been busy with other stuff). I CAN tell you, however, that it does include a chapter specifically on ion propulsion, which is what I've been chipping at every now and then. Maneuver nodes work pretty decently with high thrust engines, but not so much for low thrust, which is where the book can help you. The downside is that it's not cheap. I paid about 110 bucks for it on Amazon.

Also, that ion propulsion chapter (or low thrust engines in general, to be more exact) isn't in the first edition, it's in the newer second edition. Legitimately the first time I've actually been happy for an updated edition of a book.

u/Bozotic · 3 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

Should you wish to learn how airplanes work,

http://www.amazon.com/Stick-Rudder-Explanation-Art-Flying/dp/0070362408

I ran across this book in the early-mid 1980's when I couldn't keep from crashing "Microsoft Flight Simulator II" on my Commodore 64 :)

The book was oldie but goodie even then. In fact I found it so helpful and interesting that I went on to get my pilots license and instrument rating.

u/aladdinator · 3 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

Aww Yisss, that book is fantastic. It was recommended to me by coworkers when I was interning in a space company.

http://imgur.com/8DwcXga (Proof)

Just pulled it out and another book that was recommended to me called Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

u/Phredward · 2 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

This is great! I've been reading Riding Rockets and it's amazing how little insight shuttle pilots had into what was happening on the outside of the ship. In KSP you see everything from any angle, but in real life, you've just got your own 2 eyes and any cameras someone thought to attach.

u/SpartanBeryl · 5 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

It’s called the Von Braun Ferry Rocket.

If you don’t know much about Wernher von Braun, I highly recommend you read this book. A model of his rocket is featured on the cover of the book.

u/atomfullerene · 3 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

This one is from The Smoke Ring

>East takes you out, out takes you west, west takes you in, in takes you east, port and starboard bring you back

And that's the basics of manuvering in orbit all summed up in one tidy sentence.

u/MunarIndustries · 2 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

Oh man... I did not know this existed. I always thought Vall-henge was a nod to Engines of God

u/jrandom · 2 pointsr/KerbalSpaceProgram

Link to Amazon.com Hardcover 2nd Edition (this is the version I bought)

It's weird to read a technical text that is gripping. I read it cover to cover, despite not getting the math.